


tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

by swainlake



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Mythology, Angst, F/M, Reincarnation, tagged major character death but it's not permanent i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 18:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20412094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swainlake/pseuds/swainlake
Summary: They are two binary suns, circling one another, over and over and over—She wants it to end.She will never let it end.





	tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us

___________________

_see millenniums ago, love_  
_ we were nothing more than stardust_  
_ just the galaxy beneath us_  
_ you found me_  
  
_ — kesha_

___________________

Clarke was made for war; made for the breaking of men and kingdoms and lives.

Her mother had borne her from her own mind, reaching into the deepest recesses of her imagination and plucking out a blonde-haired, rosy-cheeked, fully-formed Clarke. A Clarke who could recite strategy as easily as she could sing hymns; a Clarke who could weave enough discord to start a war as easily as she could weave flowers into her hair; a Clarke who wrapped her fingers around the weight of a sword before she’d even taken her first steps.

Clarke’s mother had made her for a purpose but that did not make her love her any less. She sometimes thinks her mother spent all the love she had on the making of her.

She did not have a father.

Men weren’t worth the effort, her mother would tell her matter-of-factly. Too emotional, too _entitled_. Too willing to forsake everything for a pretty face.

And perhaps this is why Clarke looks the way she does, why she was born with one of the prettiest faces one of the oldest gods could imagine for her only daughter, a pretty face to go to war for.

_You are above it all_, she would brag as she braided Clarke’s hair into a crown, _you are the wisest parts of me. The strongest. All the very best parts. You will never need a man._

___________________

And she wasn’t _wrong_, her mother. 

Clarke did not need a man. 

That didn’t mean she might never _want_ one.

___________________

She meets Bellamy when he’s on one side of a battle and she’s on the other.

Well, perhaps ‘meets’ isn’t the right word considering she’s got her sword pressed against the artery in his thigh— 

(one slice and he’d bleed out before he hit the ground, one twist of her hand and then she could move onto the next soldier, and then the next, and the next, and this is what she was made for wasn’t it? commanding death? how could she start wars she herself wouldn’t fight in?) 

—and he’s holding a sword to her throat.

She would not die, even from this, but he would.

There is no fear in his eyes though, not for death, and she tells herself that is what stays her hand.

___________________

Mortal men have thirsts not even the gods could quench.

She has seen blood-lust, has incited it in men less controlled than him, but that is the only lust she has had any real experience with. 

Her mother bore her from her own mind, refusing the hands of any man who reached for her, cursing her fellow gods who thought a prick between their legs afforded them the right to presume to own her in any way.

She was a sexless creature not for the absence of desire but for the absence of anybody worthy of desire.

This is the lesson she has taught her daughter.

Clarke knows mortal men have thirsts, just as immortal men do. Immortal women, too.

Even she is not above it.

Still.

Those who lose themselves too easily to the wants of their bodies are to be pitied just as much as those who lose themselves to the bloodlust of the battlefield.

She was made to incite all manner of lusts, but never to quench them.

This is the truth Clarke tells herself each time she spies Bellamy being led away by a smiling camp follower with flowers in their hair—

or golden bangles around their arms—

or lips stained by wine—

but all, all of them with the same heat in their eyes as his fingers tangle with theirs and his lips pull into a smirk.

_(she cannot want him)_

He cannot be worthy of her.

He cannot _want_ her.

_(perhaps she is not worthy of him)_

Not when he so easily walks by her with his hand in somebody else’s.

This is the truth Clarke tells herself as his eyes flick over to meet hers where she sits by the fire, unseen by him unless she wants to be seen by him (and isn’t that the problem? she _always_ wants to be seen by him and he always looks, looks, looks, but then he’s gone again and she’s left to deal with her own share of thirsts all alone).

That it is the truth does not make it her heart hurt any less when her eyes meet his and she sees the same heat in his own as she saw in his bedfellows’.

She always looks away first, unable to watch him enter his tent when she knows what he plans to do in there.

___________________

He has _ruined_ her, this man.

___________________

_if i was born as a blackthorn tree i’d wanna be felled by you, _  
_ held by you,_  
_ fuel the pyre of your enemies_  
  
_ — hozier_

___________________

Here is a secret that mortals do not know: gods are lonely creatures. Lonely, grasping, needy creatures. 

She wants to sink her fingers in his chest and tear his heart from it so that she could always keep it close, keep it true. She wants to bury herself deep into his skin and make a home there. 

She is the closest thing these mortals have seen to a commander of death in the flesh; the god of the underworld being as disinterested in the mortal world as the rest of the gods.

Apart from her.

War-maker. Soldier-killer. Destroyer of worlds.

She has more names than even she can count but to him, always to him, she is simply _Clarke_.

Is it any wonder that above all of it, despite what the other gods say about it, she finds she only wants him to want her _back?_

___________________

Here is a secret immortals do not know: mortals are lonely creatures too. Lonely, grasping, desperate creatures. 

If she willed it, he would cut out his heart himself to give to her because it is already hers. 

It’s hers, it’s hers, it’s always only hers.

He has his share of names too, he may not be a god but he is not _nothing_. 

Soldier. Brother. Son. 

They are in the midst of another war (always, always another war) and this time his sword is turned away from her, and his back is pressed against hers, and he is as-ever trusting of her to watch his blindest spots.

No sword will fell him while she stands at his side. No enemy will make their way past their combined defences.

Together, they will win.

Since they met, since the moment she moved her sword away from him and decided his side of the battle lines held so much more promise than her own, it’s always together.

Is it any wonder that before all others, despite anything else he might think of the gods, he only wants her to want him _back?_

___________________

She shrugs her _palla_ off, feeling it slide down past her shoulders before letting it loose to fall against the floor with a soft noise. 

There. 

The last of her defences, discarded between them.

She raises her chin in defiance— 

against her mother for calling him beneath her? against the other gods who whisper-hiss amongst themselves that he is unworthy of her favour? against _him_, for daring to tell her with his eyes each night that she could not love him just as well if not _better_ than one of his mortal lovers? 

—and ignored the trembling in her hands.

This trembling is nothing, she tells herself. She was just cold.

(a kind lie; gods do not feel the cold and besides, she was _burning, burning, burning_ up just with the thought of touching him outside of battle, outside of the times she’s sewn his ravaged skin together with her own golden strands of hair — stronger than the strongest of thread)

The air around them is still for a beat, then two, as he takes in the sight of her bared body. 

She does not scar like he does. 

No mortal blade has ever pierced her skin.

But for all her soft curves and unmarked skin, she is a _fighter_. 

She fights to keep her hands from clenching into fists the longer he remains silent and she is struck then with a sudden fear; perhaps she had assumed wrong? Perhaps he really didn’t want her?

(but she had been _so sure_—)

“Will you not have me?”

He swallows before raising his own chin in a subconscious mimicry of her; a mirror. Her other half in every way that matters.“You would give yourself to me?”

“If you give yourself to me.”

_Only me_, she does not say, but that is what he hears.

There’s no question. 

No hesitation.

_(he is already hers, and she is his, this is mere formality. _

_this is something he would’ve been content to live his whole life without but gods is he so very thankful he doesn’t have to)_

Bellamy moves forward then, one step, then another, until his hand is pressed against the paleness of her hip. His calloused fingers slide down, down, against the impossibly soft silk of her thigh. He looks like he might kneel before her then, this man who did not believe in kneeling, not for kings, not for gods. This man who, despite his own beliefs, has yet conquered thousands in their name regardless because he’s _smart_, her Bellamy. A tactician, like her. He may not worship the gods himself but he knows how to use the idea of them in order to command an army of mortal men who do. 

_(he looks like he might kneel but he doesn’t, not yet, but later, later he will. and it will feel like absolution)_

She does not know how they make it to his pallet but she finds herself falling backwards onto the rough-spun cloth of his blankets and it is only then that his lips capture hers.

He is made for war, and his kisses taste like battle.

Her own bed in her mother’s palace is soft as fresh milk; when she looks up, up, up, through the draping she can see more stars than most mortals even know exist and when she breathes in she can taste sickly-sweet ambrosia on her tongue. The heavens were her home. She spent her very first night alive bundled between the slippery-slide of sheets made from the softest of cloths and they are more familiar to her than the calluses of this man’s hands against her skin and yet—

And yet she has never felt more at home than right then: in Bellamy’s soldier’s tent, on Bellamy’s army-issued blankets, with Bellamy's warrior-hands pressed into her skin, with Bellamy’s cracked lips scraping against her neck _just right_.

He is made for war, but so is she. 

She has trained for this battle her whole life.

His eyes meet hers as he moves away, before they slip down to take in the sight of her heaving chest, her flushed cheeks, then back again to those eyes.

He cannot think of any sight more beautiful than the sight of her looking at him like _that_ and letting him see it.

Love comes in at the eyes.

This is where he kneels, not at her feet but between her thighs. 

His mouth drags against her ankle, her calf, her knee, and her leg curls farther over his shoulder but his eyes do not leave hers. He braces an arm beside her hip, his mouth resting just on the inside of her knee as he hesitates over her.

His hands edge higher, just a little, his thumbs stroking a barely-there touch against the generous curve of her ass before his hands move to curl around her thighs, fingers spread, cupping around the width of her, so _warm_ and _large_ and she wants to _see_, wants to see exactly just how big they look on her because she’s always loved his hands.

Even when they were holding somebody who was not her, she’s loved them.

She loves every part of him.

Having him so close to her, _finally_, is something she wants to keep in her mind forever.

“Ask me again,” He murmurs against her skin. “Ask me again if I would have you.”

She inhales sharply, “_Will you_?” 

He presses a slow kiss to the inside of her thigh, drags his lips upward. “Ask me again.”

“Will—” She gasps sharply, she can’t _breathe_, and_ just for a moment, she just needs one moment _she has to close her eyes against the feeling already building inside her. He’s barely touched her. There’s really no excuse for the glistening on her thighs. She never thought it would feel like this, with only his hands and his lips against her skin. 

Her mother was right, she tells herself. She does not need him.

She does _not._

(it’s not the first lie she has ever told herself but it is in that moment that she realises she may be built for many things but lying to herself is not one of them.

not about this.

not about him.)

“Please.” She thinks there might be tears in her eyes, and isn’t that funny? A thousand battles, a thousand deaths, and this is the first thing that brings her to tears. “Won’t you have me, Bellamy?”

___________________

_the day i open my eyes to you, _  
_was also the day i open my heart to you_  
  
_ — jayson engay_

___________________

this is how it ends: 

___________________ 

There was a battle,

_(there is always a battle)_

and she had turned, twisted her body impossibly, laughed joyously at the rush of it, to dodge a slice of a sword _she could’ve survived _—

_(she could’ve survived it, she could’ve survived, why, why, why did she turn away from him?_

_she could’ve survived)_

—and that split-second, that moment of battle-born joy, had shattered when his answering laugh had cut off with a surprised gasp.

_(she could’ve survived that swing of the sword but he was mortal and mortal men couldn’t survive an arrow to the heart)_

The cry she lets out then is inhuman in its grief, in its fear, in its _rage_, as she catches his falling body in her arms.

She was born with enough strength in her to hold up the world, but in that moment she cannot find it in herself hold up _her_ world and so she falls with him to the ground.

There’s so much _blood_.

She thought she was used to bloody battlefields. 

Once, she’d dreamt of tearing his heart from his chest and hiding it within her own. It had been a selfish, _greedy_ desire born from jealousy and she had dismissed it as such.

Now, she thinks, if only she hadn’t. 

She could’ve kept it _safe, _she should’ve kept him_ safe._

He cannot speak from the blood that pours from his mouth, he can only gasp deep, wet, rattling, gasps, but he has the strength to reach towards her and tangle his hand in her hair.

The last time his hands had been in her hair had been just that morning—

they’d been so _happy_

—but this time the blood on his hands turns her blonde hair pink as the sunrise they’d watched together as they had helped one another into their armour.

_(it had been so beautiful,_

_they’d been so happy_

_it’s not fair, it’s not fair,_

_no, no, no, no, no, no_

_take it back. give him back._

_they deserved more time, he deserved more time._

_give him back to me)_

He cannot speak but she knows what he’d say if he could. Knows what he wants to say so badly that he’s choking on his last breath for it:

She says it for him.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.

___________________

this is how it begins: 

___________________ 

With the taste of blood in her mouth from where she had pressed her lips to his, she stands.

She walks away from his men.

His army.

His people.

She no longer has a use for them. 

She does not know where the arrow came from.

She wants to rip them apart, each of them, all of them.

There are no sides anymore.

Not when he isn’t by hers.

___________________

_i don’t care what he comes back as,_  
_as long as he comes back._  
_ please do this for me._  
_ please?_  
_ please?_  
_ please?_  
_ please?_  
  
_ — practical magic_

___________________

She goes to her mother first, throws herself at the altar of her feet and wails.

Wails out her grief, her anger, tears at her still-blood-stained hair and claws at her impenetrable skin.

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.

This life is not fair and she does not want it anymore.

Not without him.

_This is why gods aren’t meant for mortals to love, _her mother croons as she gathers her into her arms. _I warned you not to let yourself need him. I didn’t want this for you._

“But I _do_ need him,” She sobs. “And I want him_ back. _Please,_ please, _I will only ever ask you for this one thing.” 

Her mother looks genuinely remorseful when she tells her it’s impossible. “Mortals must die. It is the way of things.”

She tears herself from her arms, and for the first time in her life she _hates_.

“I refuse — I _refuse_ to live without him.”

___________________

Clarke was born from her mother’s mind. Fatherless, plucked from her imagination and given the role of commander of death well before she had any true understanding of what death _meant_.

The finality of it.

The devastation.

Now, she wonders what use is being the commander of death when she cannot command the one she loves away from it?

She does not know how she can die, but she will make it happen.

Either he will live again, or she will die.

These are her choices.

These are the only choices.

There is no life without him.

___________________

Later, she will go back and take his body and cut him out into stars. 

Not little stars, but big ones. Stars big enough to be mistaken for the those belonging to the titans. Stars big enough to be seen by every mortal who looks upwards, by every god who dared judge him and find him wanting. 

All the world will know him, and be helpless but to look at him in awe and love him.

It won’t even be but a fraction of how she loved him, though, this she knows.

___________________

Now, she seeks death.

Death is a god that is much older than her, much wiser. If there is a way to be with him again, this is how she can find it.

It was a mortal’s lot to die, she is told. Go away, she is told. Learn to love someone who is within your grasp, she is told. He is not yours anymore.

No, she replies. He is mine, she replies. As I am his, she replies. I will never love another, she replies. Let me be with him.

And _that_—

That is what makes Death pause.

A god demanding the return of a mortal lover was not unheard of but a god willing to give up their own life for one? That did not happen.

It was a mortal’s lot to die,

but,

she had sewn his hurts together with strands of her own hair.

(_very wise_, the god of death had said slyly, _very tricky._

as though she’d meant it to be _tricky_. as though she’d meant it as anything more than an expression of her love for him. her devotion. parts of her freely given, used to keep him together.

in the end it was not enough to make him immortal, to keep him from dying, but it _was_ enough to keep him tethered to her.)

She would take it.

___________________

She meets him again on a battlefield.

This time, she is a healer.

(she does not speak of how her hands haven’t touched a sword in years, of how she has not left the mortal world since climbing out of the underworld because she’s been waiting for him to return to her.

she does not speak of how it took her almost as long as this version of him has been alive to forgive the sight of an arrow.

she does not have the time to speak of anything at all)

She meets him again on the battlefield.

She loses him almost immediately, this time to infection.

He had taken too long getting to her.

Her hands shake as she wraps his body in a shroud, tucking lavender under his arms, between his legs. The smell of infection makes her eyes water (she’s not crying, she’s _not, _not when she knows that this is not the end of them) but she refuses to let anybody else near him.

She will take care of him as long as she can, and then she will wait for him until she sees him again and she can take care of him better. 

___________________

The time after the time after that is as far from a battlefield as they could possibly get.

She’s still a healer, commanding death in a way that fills her with pride instead of the rush of battle-joy. It's not what she was made for, not what her mother had wanted for her, but it gives her something to do.

She’s gotten quite good at it.

She has had a lot of time to waste while she’s been waiting for him.

He is so very young, this time around. 

His mother has just laboured a full day and night to bring him into the world and unlike most babes she’s helped deliver, he arrives quietly.

As quietly as he had left in his past lives.

She is the first person to hold him. It’s not by design, not really; his mother is tired from the labour and there is nobody else.

She would have it no other way.

She wants him in her arms always, in any way she can get him.

She coos down at him, brushes her nose against the softness of his cheek. Breathes in the scent of him.

It’s been lifetimes since she’d been held by him but still, she would have known the scent of him anywhere. She could have picked him out blind, in the middle of a battle, in the darkest of nights.

He had always smelled of blood and sweat and then later, he had smelled of sex and _them_. 

He smells different, like this.

She loves it. 

___________________ 

He grows, and she watches him grow, and she tells herself that it is enough for her.

In this life she does her best to keep him away from war; away from blood and death and pain.

He scrapes his knees like growing boys are wont to do, loses a tooth while running with the other children in town. He breaks an arm climbing a tree to rescue a stray cat who’d gotten stuck. He is kindness and bravery and selflessness personified and she fixes all his hurts, knowing each time that it will not be his last.

She fixes them all anyway — and yet he does not notice how she looks the same as she did when he was born. Neither does his mother. None of the townspeople do. 

Wilful ignorance, the most mortal thing of all.

He grows.

He’s looked up to. He learns to lead, and the townsfolk learn to listen to him. 

He grows, outside and in.

It is a pleasure to be able to see it.

___________________

It’s almost inevitable that there comes a day when she can’t keep him safe any longer.

It’s not a battlefield this time but its still war. 

In a way, it’s always war.

Soldiers come on one of the rare days she's visiting her mother, and they are fighting in the name of a king who believes he owns these people he’s never met. They are fighting and they need more fighters. Bellamy refuses to go with them, refuses to let them take anybody else with them.

He is hanged for it before she can get there. 

She arrives in time to kill them all before they can move onto the next town.

It’s the first time she’s held a sword in well over a hundred years.

It feels like yesterday.

This time, she leaves his body with the townspeople after she’s finished cleaning it. 

_(there is a constellation in the sky she’s made of him, one she can see even from this tiny town. that is where the body of her love lies. this body of his does not belong only to her) _

He had been loved here, her Bellamy.

Not as she has loved him. Nobody could ever love him as she did but—

They had loved him too.

She leaves his body, and then she leaves. 

He won’t be back, not here, this she knows.

Just as she knows there’s nothing left for her here now.

___________________

_stay away from the ones you love too much._  
_those are the ones who will kill you._  
  
_ — donna tartt_

___________________

Time is their greatest enemy.

Death is something they may not have conquered, but it was something they could at least bargain with.

Time?

Time refused to be bargained with, not even by the gods.

___________________ 

He’s a scholar in this life.

A teacher.

He speaks of the human condition, of want and want_ing_, of worship.

They do not worship the gods in this century, not anymore. He does not know _her_ anymore, he does not know her at all yet, but he will. She’ll make sure of it.

He is also married.

He _loves_ her, this mortal woman who is not her.

It _hurts_.

She thinks she might hate him.

___________________

He drags his nose across her most secret place, “Ask me, Clarke.”

She shudders and it's only half because she can still remember their very first night together, when he’d told her to ask him if he would have her. 

“Do you love her?” It takes effort to meet his eyes then, but she manages it. She thinks this may be what finally kills her. “Do you love her like you love me?”

His gaze darkens. “I’ll never love anyone the way I love you.” And it’s with that that he pulls aside her skirts and buries his mouth between her legs, tongue slipping between her folds to lap up her juices like a man dying of thirst.

“Bellamy!” She moans, “_Please_—”

“I _will_ please you.” He growls against her wetness. “Only me.”

He does not know the half of it, her Bellamy.

This is a first for him, in this life, but it is the hundredth for her. The thousandth. She has spent lifetimes with his head between her thighs and her hands buried in his curls.

She knows him better than she knows herself.

Of course it’s only him.

For her it’ll only ever be him.

The tragedy is that he cannot say the same.

The tragedy is that it never lasts.

But she would have him until she couldn’t any longer, and then she would find him and have him again and again and again. 

_(no, no, no, no, no_

_he’s mine, you can’t have him._

_not again._

_give him BACK)_

He stays long enough that the sweat on their skin cools to the touch and they can once again catch their breath but in the end he pulls his face from the space between her shoulder and neck and _looks_ at her, heartbroken and filled with remorse and she knows he will not touch her again.

He loves her, she is his, he might be hers, but she cannot have him the way she wants him.

Not in this life.

She had found him late, when his hair was more salt than pepper, when his knees cracked if he stood too fast. When the tan on his hands only highlighted the paleness of the stretch of skin underneath his wedding ring.

He has _children_.

A son, a daughter who looks the age Clarke herself always looks.

She’d never given him children. 

For the first time, she does not stay until he dies.

___________________

_love, for you,_  
_is larger than the usual_  
_ romantic love. it’s like a religion._  
_ it’s terrifying._  
  
_ — richard siken_

___________________

_Perhaps that’s all they are to each other, all they could ever be — partners in death, in war, in sacrifice. _

_Partners in everything but life. _

_They are two binary suns, circling one another, over and over and over—_

_She wants it to end._

_She will never let it end._

___________________

**Author's Note:**

>   
[ — come scream with me on tumblr ](https://swainlake.tumblr.com/)   



End file.
